Thorpe
Thewles Iron Age Settlement
Objects
& Artefacts
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LFragments of pottery vessels comprise the largest
group of finds, although perishable vessels of
wood and leather would also have been used for
storage and tablewares. The pottery is very crude
by modern standards, made of local clay and fashioned
by hand into simple shapes before being fired
in a bonfire or simple pit-kiln. The fabric is
usually dark grey or black, indicating that the
pottery was fired in an oxygen-free atmosphere,
as would occur at the heart of a well-piled bonfire.
Slightly finer quality vessels with out-turned
rims that would accommodate a wooden lid were
used for cooking, and these often have burnt
concretions adhering to the outside where the
vegetable contents have spilled over and burnt
in the cooking hearth. Large, coarser vessels
without rims were probably used for storage.
These are often thick-walled with very large
grits incorporated into the clay to help conduct
heat into the core of the vessel wall and so
prevent cracking and warping during the initial
stages of firing. A water-filled depression,
or slurry-pit, was used to refine the clay; one
of these was found within the ditches of a circular
house, although it was not necessarily contemporary
with the building.
In most respects, the settlement would be largely
self-sufficient but certain items would have
to be acquired through barter or gift exchange.
The most important commodity would have been
salt, although evidence for this could not be
expected to survive. Nor is the locality rich
in local stone. This would necessitate the importation
of corn-grinding equipment to process the cereal
harvest of spelt wheat and six-row hulled barley.
This is particularly important for spelt wheat,
which is a hulled grain that requires extra grinding
to convert it to bread flour. The basic corn-grinding
implement is the quern. Two types of quern stone
have been found at Thorpe Thewles. The earlier
form is the saddle quern, which is a simple flat
stone with a saddle-shaped depression on the
top-side in which the grain is ground using a
smaller top stone. This was replaced by the beehive
quern, which has two parts of equal diameter.
The top-stone is hemispherical or bun-shaped,
with a central conical hopper to hold the grain
that falls down a hole to the grinding surface.
It is held in position with a metal pivot that
fits into a central hole in the bottom stone.
The upper stone has a further socket to place
wooden pegs for the handles used to rotate or
oscillate the upper stone. These objects were
manufactured as rough-outs in quarry site factories
in the Pennines and the North Yorkshire Moors
and were traded across the region. The beehive
quern was introduced into Northern England in
the 1st Century BC and marks a technological
advance in the processing of cereals. These advances
in agricultural techniques allowed for the first
time a surplus of agricultural produce that could
be traded for the luxury goods that became available
in the first century AD.
The material remains of this period are of a
completely different character from the earlier,
purely Iron Age objects because this period marks
the first contact between this part of the north-east
and the higher civilizations around the Mediterranean,
especially the Roman Empire which by AD50 had
conquered southern England. These Roman objects
were mainly fine wheel-thrown pottery vessels
that originated in Northern Italy, central France
and Northern Spain.
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